YWCA NSW Blog

What’s your favourite book?

Hi there, I wanted to share this video with you, which gives a brief overview of the literacy programs that we run out of our Community Hub, Yummy Cafe, in Ambarvale. According to UNESCO, 759 million adults still lack minimum literacy skills. It’s a figure that’s staggering but it demonstrates the real need for initiatives [...]

What does the game of “Simon Says” have to do with Mentoring?

Hi, it’s Sharne again, coordinator of the Big Brothers Big Sisters™ program. I wanted to share some thoughts I had around the game “Simon Says” and mentoring. I was never really any good at following the rules in the game of “Simon Says”. It’s a game that if the “players” follow an action (usually physical) [...]

Update from the Commonwealth Youth Forum

Hello from Fremantle, Western Australia, site of the Commonwealth Youth Forum! After spending a relaxing weekend with the family at glorious Bunker Bay (near Margaret River) I was ready for some serious discussion around issues facing young people in the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth Youth Forum (CYF) 2011 is a parallel event to the Commonwealth Heads [...]

Big ideas for our Bigs

“Experience in itself is neither productive nor unproductive, it is how you reflect on it that makes it significant or not significant” (Bolton 1979) Every week we get check-ins from our Bigs (the adult volunteer mentors from our Big Brothers Big Sisters™ program) where they talk about the experiences that they have had with their [...]

A touch of the theatrical

Yesterday, some of the team attended the Youth Action and Policy Association (YAPA) 2011 NSW Youth Work Conference in Sydney. The conference aimed to ‘inspire, energise, support and connect’ youth sector workers around their professional and personal practice. I went along to present with some of the team… We arrived at the conference with plenty [...]

Team spirit prevails at City2Surf

My lead up to the big race started out strong, but as the day got closer the training became less important. There are a million excuses but a combination of work, “alpine training” and an injured hip kept me away from the pavement and inside the office. My spirit hadn’t wavered and I was still [...]

YWCA NSW in Zurich!

YWCA World Council Day one and Two – arrival and registration First steps on Swiss soil for World Council and I was greeted by a cow. An interesting departure from the usual customs officer so I was quite disappointed when it just turned out to be a rather strange but lovely audio track on the [...]

Supporting families

We’re coming into the colder months, and with the cost of electricity going up, a lot of families are starting to worry about bills. With that in mind, I’d like to share with you the story of a homeless family that we met. When we think of homeless people, we often think of rough sleepers, [...]

Sharing the Story of Toby

So, I thought given all the talk that was going on in the media around bullying in schools, I might share with you some stories about some kids that we’re working with in schools. One of them’s a young man by the name of Toby and we met him in 2009 when he was just [...]

A Big Brother calls to check in

One of our Big Brothers called to check-in today. They have been doing quite casual outings over the past few weeks like going to the park, building bike jumps etc. On Friday night they went to a basketball game. It was their first outing that cost money and the little (10 years of age) hadn’t [...]